Overview
Childhood for Jewish children in the wartime era was fraught with difficulty. Jewish children during the Holocaust faced extreme conditions and the “testimonies taken from children are difficult to read because they represent the most vulnerable victims of the National Socialists (or Nazis) and the impotence of the adult world to fulfill their obligation to protect them” (Cohen et al 43). The stories of children in the Holocaust showcase “the cruelty of a war waged against civilians and of a child’s first experience of death” (Heberer 36). The childhood Holocaust experience mirrors the trauma of the adult experience, where young boys and girls were harshly targeted, often more so, than adults.
Survival
Child survivors of the Holocaust escaped unimaginable odds to survive and bear witness to the horrors that they and their families endured. Cohen et al. determined that “a child survivor of the Holocaust is defined as any Jewish child… who survived in German-occupied Europe by whatever means, whether in hiding, as a partisan, in the ghettos, on the run, or in the camps” (Cohen et al 1). Jewish children were perceived by the Reich as a weaker group undeserving of food, warmth, or materials. These children grew up in “a world in which usually accepted standards of morality were over-turned, where the torture and killing of children became a state virtue” and where “the Nazis murdered Jewish children on the grounds of racial ideology” in a way that depicts the purest form of the Nazism’s “antihuman views on society” (Bartrop and Grimm xxii). In cases of survival, some children with Aryan features were forcibly taken and placed into German families, while others escaped, were rescued, or were transported in Kindertransports to safer environments.
Biological Stereotypes
The biology of Jewish individuals, especially that of children, was deemed worthless based on pseudoscience standards created by the Nazis. People were stereotyped and measured against the Germans’ idealized Aryan eugenic features (blond hair and blue eyes) with the aim of establishing racial hierarchies. The Nazi goal, as described by Himmler, was to “deprive Jewry of its biological reserves” where “children below [fifteen] were exterminated” since they were deemed “dangerous to the German people” (Grunwald-Spier 13). Himmler’s claim, however, contradicts these beliefs, as certain Jewish children presenting Aryan features were considered ‘racially valuable’ to the Reich. These children “were stolen from their families,” placed in German households, and forced to integrate into German culture (Bartrop and Grimm xxi). Children who presented stereotyped ‘Jewish features’ faced racism, discrimination, and persecution in their classrooms and from larger society, including Nazis youth and supporters.
Process of Survival
In order to save the lives of many of the children targeted by the Germans, some parents registered their children for Kindertransports. These systems transported children to adoptive families outside of Germany, providing them with their best chance of survival during the time period. Children who escaped the Nazis through these transports were told that they were “the lucky ones who had lived when others had died,” creating a sense of dysphoria during their childhood (Clifford 2). While some found refuge in caring host homes, others faced abuse in adoptive households and orphanages. Tragically, many never reunited with their loved ones as they were either too young to remember their parents or were the last surviving member of their household. These children also experienced harshness growing up in England as they were deemed “enemy aliens” once they turned “fifteen… and were no longer allowed to live in militarily sensitive parts of the country” (Soumerai and Schulz). Even after escaping, these children faced isolation or alienation from families, their culture, and society.
Children who did not leave on Kindertransports were deported alongside their families to ghettos. These forced resettlement camps, such as Theresienstadt, had a mixture of inmates including Jews, Romani people, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witness and many more groups who were seen as “undesirable” to the Reich. Ghetto officials often separated children from parents, and young boys from young girls. These temporary housing complexes presented their own “dangerous environment” where “youngsters figured as the likeliest victims of starvation, illness, and destitution” and “children also numbered among the first deported from ghetto settings to killing centers” (Heberer 108-109). Children were forced to create their own micro-groups and surrogate families from these separate gendered environments. Ghettos served as holding places for Jewish individuals before they were transferred to concentration camps.
Transportation to Camps
Still Alive
Klüger is a strong voice of the Holocaust that highlights the pre-Holocaust atmosphere, the harsh racism and conditions her family faced in Vienna, the ghettos, concentration camps, and finally, her escape to freedom.
Children of the Holocaust
Bartrop and Grimm discuss children as a vulnerable group and showcase the extreme manners in which they were targeted and abused by the Germans, while also describing stories of survival and heroism that emerge from the Holocaust.
Children During the Holocaust
Offering a collection of personal letters, diaries, court testimonies, government documents, military reports, speeches, newspapers, photographs, and artwork, the books highlights the diversity of children's experiences during the Holocaust.
Child Survivors of the Holocaust
Paul Valent is a psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor who recounts how his views of the world were shaped and influenced by his traumatic childhood experiences.
Survivors
The book discusses the postwar lives of Jewish children growing up during the Holocaust. It showcases the fluid or even imaginative memory of children in regard to their traumatic Holocaust history.
Children in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath
The work analyzes statistics regarding the lives and outcomes attributed to childhood survival and stability during the Holocaust.
A Voice from the Holocaust
The book tells the story of Eve Nussbaum Soumerai who is the only survivor of her family from the Holocaust.
Women's Experiences in the Holocaust
The book details the words of women, some of whom witnessed the young and old (vulnerable people) being persecuted and exterminated by the Reich.
Extermination Camps
Children and their families were transported in overcrowded and filthy cattle cars and railways to concentration camps. Families who were deported to camps like Auschwitz, were forced to exit cattle cars and were immediately separated by the Nazis: parents from “children”, and the “elderly” and “sick” “from the robust and the young” (Grunwald-Spier 13). Anyone deemed unfit for manual labor and work was sent directly to the gas chambers. The women and elderly, who were often holding and caring for children, had no chance of survival at the camps: “A survivor of the ramp selections said that ‘one imagined that the fate of the first group would be easier, more humane’” compared to those sent to work at labor camps - though that was not the case (Grunwald-Spier 13). Most children who endured the Holocaust until this point were killed minutes upon arrival.
The few children who managed to survive the selection process were separated into male and female groups. The Auschwitz Kommandant, Rudolf Höss, admitted at his trial that "there were always more men fit for labor than women” (Grunwald-Spier 13). Thus, adolescent teenagers, especially young boys, were the most likely to be selected and survive the harsh labor camps. As the children were a much weaker and vulnerable group than the adults in camps, they required care and protection from adults
Camp Sisters
In certain cases, the bonds that people made during their time in camps showcased the human resolve and spirit in times of harsh conditions. In many cases, such as in the women’s section of the concentration camps, women and young girls would become “camp sisters” or surrogate families for each other. These women and children supported each other by providing additional supplies, comfort, and the feeling of safety for many of those who lost family members. Holocaust survivors such as Ruth Klüger in her memoir Still Alive: a Holocaust Girlhood Remembered talked about her experience in the Holocaust as a young girl and related these back to her mother’s “adoption” of another girl her age in the camps. However, young girls, especially adolescents, experienced interruptions to puberty and menstrual cycles due to experimentation and starvation. Many survivors of camps had to grapple with the loss of family as well as any future biological families they might have.
Conclusions
The childhood Holocaust experience was nearly identical in terms of gender. While young girls were targeted more harshly as they were seen as subpar workers for labor camps, all children encountered harsh conditions and persecution with the same deadly efficiency as adults. The horrific treatment of the most vulnerable members of society illustrates the profound extent of moral degradation in society that enabled such an atrocity to occur. As Paul Valent, a child Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist writes:
“The death of one child is difficult to comprehend. The murder of one child is even harder. The murder of one and a half million children is impossible to understand. And yet Nazi leaders decreed that, along with all Jewish adults, all Jewish children were to be exterminated. The annihilation was near complete. (Valent viiii).
This systematic extermination of innocent lives highlights the value and importance of vigilance against persecution to ensure that young children will never again grow up with fear of execution.
Citations
Bartrop, Paul R., and Eve E. Grimm. Children of the Holocaust. ABC-CLIO, 2020. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=e900xww&AN=2634292&scope=site.
Clifford, Rebecca. Survivors: Children’s Lives After the Holocaust. Yale University Press, 2020. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv14rmq4g.
Cohen, Sharon Kangisser, et al. Children in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath : Historical and Psychological Studies of the Kestenberg Archive. Berghahn Books, 2017. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=e000xna&AN=1284581&scope=site.
Grunwald-Spier, Anges. Women’s Experiences in the Holocaust: In Their Own Words. Amberley Publishing, 2019.
Heberer, Patricia. Children During the Holocaust, AltaMira Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gasouthern/detail.action?docID=858965.
Klüger, Ruth. Still Alive: a Holocaust Girlhood Remembered. The Feminist Press, New York, 2001.
Michlic, Joanna Beata. Jewish Families in Europe, 1939-Present : History, Representation, and Memory. Brandeis University Press, 2017. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=e000xna&AN=1201993&scope=site.
Samuel, Vivette. Rescuing the Children: A Holocaust Memoir, University of Wisconsin Press, 2002. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gasouthern/detail.action?docID=3445277.
Soumerai, Eve Nussbaum and Carol D. Schulz. A Voice from the Holocaust. Greenwood Press, 2003.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “The Biological State: Nazi Racial Hygiene, 1933–1939.” Holocaust Encyclopedia, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-biological-state-nazi-racial-hygiene-1933-1939.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Remember the Children: Daniel’s Story.” Current Museum Exhibitions, ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/museum-exhibitions/remember-the-children-daniels-story.
Valent, Paul. Child Survivors of the Holocaust. Taylor & Francis Group, 2002. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gasouthern/detail.action?docID=1272904.